Detroit Club to re-open after big renovations, membership reboot

The newly renovated Detroit Club will reopen Jan. 12 after closing four years ago.
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A bar and lounge off of a dining room for daily lunch and dinner is seen on the first floor of the Detroit Club in downtown Detroit on Wednesday December 13, 2017. (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo

Closed for four years, the Detroit Club is about to re-open its historic clubhouse in downtown following extensive renovations and a membership reboot.

New owners Emre and Lynn Uralli have put millions of dollars into updating the four-story, 1892 Detroit Club building at 712 Cass Ave., refurnishing its venerable dining and reception rooms and adding new lounge areas and amenities, including a spa and whirlpool floor and 10 overnight guest suites.

The club has begun accepting new membership applications — it's essentially restarting from scratch — and plans to have a grand opening on Jan. 12, in time to host meetings and events during the 2018 North American International Auto Show.

In contrast to the Detroit Athletic Club, its still-thriving and better-known neighbor, the Detroit Club's main dining room will be open to the public year-round for lunch, dinner and cocktails starting Jan. 15. The Detroit Club's meeting rooms can also be rented by nonmembers for weddings, receptions or other events.

"We want Detroiters to come in and experience this club, and see it for what it is," said General Manager Thomas Trainor, who previously managed the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club.

Yet whether Detroit can support a new private social club, after so many of them have closed amid dwindling finances and members, is an open question.

The list of former private clubs in Detroit includes the University Club, the Recess Club and the Renaissance Club.

The Detroit Club's few remaining old members stopped meeting shortly after the Urallis bought the clubhouse in December 2013. Two years earlier, the club had been sold for $280,000 to two club members, who flipped it to the Urallis for $1 million.

"The reason some of these city clubs aren't as successful as they used to be is because they didn't evolve with the times," Trainor said. "They had the same model — 'this is how we're going to operate, here is what we're going to offer' — and as younger people started to come into the workforce, that's not what they wanted.

"So we're going to be a private club, yet we're going to be diverse enough so that it's going to appeal to the millennials, to the downtown business community. It's not going to be as traditional in the club environment as you would think," he said.

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The Detroit Club is on Cass Avenue in downtown Detroit.(Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)

Big Renovations

Every room on every floor inside the reborn Detroit Club has undergone renovation.

A particularly dramatic transformation occurred in the basement, which had been mostly storage and a disused bowling alley. It now features a large whirlpool, a small gym, men's and women's saunas, a massage room and locker rooms.

The redone dining room and members-only library is on the ground floor. The second floor features the 120-seat Grand Ballroom and several small private dining rooms. The soaring and ornate Presidential Ballroom is still found on the third floor, although the old paisley carpeting is now a hardwood floor.

A new cigar bar is also on the third floor, tucked within the walkway that connects the club to the 1925 Detroit Free Press building. There's still a doorway between the buildings, although for now it is covered.

The long-vacant Free Press building is being redeveloped by Dan Gilbert's Bedrock real estate firm. (The Free Press relocated in 1998.)

"If we want to partner in some way based on how he repurposes that building, it can be done," Trainor said.

The fourth floor features 10 newly designed bedroom suites that will be available to club members or members' guests. Prior to the renovations, the clubhouse had a few spartan bedrooms.

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A suite is seen in the Detroit Club in downtown Detroit on Wednesday December 13, 2017. (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)

Monthly Dues

A standard membership to the new Detroit Club will cost $250 per month, plus a $3,500 entrance fee. However, the initiation and per-month rates are lower for members who are younger than 36, and lower still for those in their 20s.

The club is also offering discounted "legacy" memberships to former Detroit Club members and their children — if they care to join.

There was a legal feud several years ago between some former members and the building's new owners concerning which Detroit Club antiques would stay inside the clubhouse. Several old members have continued to meet on occasion, but on the other side of downtown in the Detroit Athletic Club.

"I’d be very surprised if any of the old members became members of the new club," John Booth II, a past club president, told the Free Press this fall. "But it’s a new club, a new era, and I wish them well.”

The Detroit Club's memberships are somewhat less expensive than the Detroit Athletic Club's. In 2015, the DAC charged a $3,500 entrance fee and $337 monthly dues for a full membership, according to a Crain's Detroit story.

DAC staff did not return repeated messages last week for information on current rates.

A Historic Club

The Detroit Club hasn't set any cap on the maximum number of members, although the club likely won't go above 500 members in its first year in order to see how the redone clubhouse is functioning. Membership peaked at about 1,000 in the 1950s.

The Detroit Club was started by local businessmen in 1882 in a rented location. The club moved to its Romanesque Revival-style building in 1892. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Less than a year after buying the Detroit Club building, Emre Uralli offered up the property in a July 2014 online auction. Bidding reached $2.9 million, but fell short of the auction's secret minimum threshold for a sale.

The Urallis also own the surface parking lot next to the club, as well as the underground parking lot below it. Both lots could be used for the club's valet parking.

Regina Peter, the club's director of sales and marketing, said membership applicants will undergo a review, although the criteria is very open.

"If he or she can enhance the experience of our other members, whether it's through networking, business or philanthropy, that's the ideal candidate for us," she said.